May the
police, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone
seized from an individual who has been arrested? This
issue has been resolved in the seminal US Supreme Court case of Riley vs. California (No. 13-132 [25
June 2014]). Ruling in the negative, the US Supreme Court declares, thus:
“We cannot deny that our decision today will have an impact on the
ability of law enforcement to combat crime. Cell phones have become important
tools in facilitating coordination and communication among members of criminal
enterprises, and can provide valuable incriminating information about dangerous
criminals. Privacy comes at a cost.
Our holding, of course, is not that the information on a cell
phone is immune from search; it is instead that a warrant is generally
required before such a search, even when a cell phone is seized incident to
arrest. Our cases have historically recognized that the warrant requirement
is “an important working part of our machinery of government,” not merely “an
inconvenience to be somehow ‘weighed’ against the claims of police efficiency.”
Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 481 (1971). Recent
technological advances similar to those discussed here have, in addition, made
the process of obtaining a warrant itself more efficient. See McNeely,
569 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11–12); id., at ___ (ROBERTS, C. J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part) (slip op., at 8) (describing
jurisdiction where “police officers can e-mail warrant requests to judges’
iPads [and] judges have signed such warrants and e-mailed them back to officers
in less than 15 minutes”).
Moreover, even though the search incident to arrest exception does
not apply to cell phones, other case-specific exceptions may still justify a
warrantless search of a particular phone. “One well -recognized exception
applies when ‘“the exigencies of the situation” make the needs of law
enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable
under the Fourth Amendment.’” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 6) (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 394
(1978)). Such exigencies could include the need to prevent the imminent
destruction of evidence in individual cases, to pursue a fleeing suspect, and
to assist persons who are seriously injured or are threatened with imminent
injury. 563 U. S., at ___. In Chadwick, for example, the Court held that
the exception for searches incident to arrest did not justify a search of the
trunk at issue, but noted that “if officers have reason to believe that luggage
contains some immediately dangerous instrumentality, such as explosives, it
would be foolhardy to transport it to the station house without opening the
luggage.” 433 U. S., at 15, n. 9.
In light of the availability of the exigent circumstances
exception, there is no reason to believe that law enforcement officers will not
be able to address some of the more extreme hypotheticals that have been
suggested: a suspect texting an accomplice who, it is feared, is preparing to
detonate a bomb, or a child abductor who may have information about the child’s
location on his cell phone. The defendants here recognize—indeed, they
stress—that such fact -specific threats may justify a warrantless search of
cell phone data. See Reply Brief in No. 13–132, at 8–9; Brief for Respondent in
No. 13–212, at 30, 41. The critical point is that, unlike the search incident
to arrest exception, the exigent circumstances exception requires a court to
examine whether an emergency justified a warrantless search in each particular
case. See McNeely, supra, at ___
Our cases have recognized that the Fourth Amendment was the
founding generation’s response to the reviled “general warrants” and “writs of
assistance” of the colonial era, which allowed British officers to rummage
through homes in an unrestrained search for evidence of criminal activity.
Opposition to such searches was in fact one of the driving forces behind the
Revolution itself. In 1761, the patriot James Otis delivered a speech in Boston
denouncing the use of writs of assistance. A young John Adams was there, and he
would later write that “[e]very man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go
away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance.” 10 Works of John
Adams 247–248 (C. Adams ed. 1856). According to Adams, Otis’s speech was “the
first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great
Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.” Id., at 248
(quoted in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 625 (1886).
Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience.
With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans
“the privacies of life,” Boyd, supra, at 630. The fact that
technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does
not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the
Founders fought. Our answer to the question of what police must do before
searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple— get
a warrant.
We reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeal in No.
13–132 and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this
opinion. We affirm the judgment of the First Circuit in No. 13–212.
It is so
ordered.” (Emphasis supplied)
It is modestly opined that the
United States of America case law, particularly on the right to privacy and against
unreasonable searches and seizures, pervades Philippine jurisprudence. In fact,
former Chief Justice Reynato Puno discussed the subject matter in his separate
opinion in the landmark case of Republic
of the Philippines v. Sandiganbayan, et. al. (GR No. 104768 [2003]).
Quoting US jurisprudence, Chief Justice
Puno stated that the “exclusionary rule” had been incorporated in the state system the US because other
means of controlling illegal police behavior had failed. He quoted at length significant US rulings, asserting
that they had a significant influence in the exclusionary rule in Philippine
jurisdiction:
“. . . Today we once again
examine the Wolf’s constitutional documentation of the right of privacy free
from unreasonable state intrusion, and after its dozen years on our books, are
led by it to close the only courtroom door remaining open to evidence secured
by official lawlessness in flagrant abuse of that basic right, reserved to all
persons as a specific guarantee against that very same unlawful conduct. . .
… Therefore, in extending the substantive protections of due process to
all constitutionally unreasonable searches - state or federal - it was
logically and constitutionally necessary that the exclusion doctrine - an essential part of the right to
privacy - be also insisted upon as an essential ingredient of the right newly
recognized by the Wolf case. In
short, the admission of the new constitutional right by Wolf could not
consistently tolerate denial of its most important constitutional privilege,
namely, the exclusion of the evidence which an accused had been forced to give
by reason of the unlawful seizure. To
hold otherwise is to grant the right but in reality to withhold its privilege
and enjoyment. Only last
year the Court itself recognized that the purpose of the exclusionary rule ‘is
to deter - to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty in the only
available way - by removing the incentive to disregard it.’ (Elkins v. United States, 364
US at 217)
